GiGse, which opens today, has announced the list of start-ups selected for the Startup Launchpad.

Held in San Francisco, US, April 24-26, the i-gaming conference will spotlight promising and disruptive start-ups that blend the best from the worlds of gambling and social gaming and offer innovative solutions for mobile gaming and legal online poker, in a one-day contest.

“The convergence of casual gaming and online gambling represents one of the hottest emerging sectors in social media,” said Hal Bringman, chairman of the social games section of GiGse and president of NVPR. “The Startup Launchpad portion of the event brings these evolutionary forces together and delivers them to the marketplace combined with a mixture of Silicon Valley’s top VCs and media alike.”

The group of start-ups selected to compete at GiGse includes Joingo, Virtual Gaming Worlds, PopCorn Games, SkillBet and Use It Better.

One of the judges in the contest and director of games partnerships at Facebook, Sean Ryan, commented: “Free-to-play gaming is the single most important trend across both desktop and mobile. The key is for start-ups to understand the user behaviour first and foremost – what problem are they solving, and why is it an important one? Also, team, team, team – a key is to have a strong technical leader from the beginning.”